How To Fall Apart
by windtrails
Summary: All the ways in which to unravel. Everyone in Forks has a story.
1. Prologue

This is my first story on and I want to take this opportunity to thank the amazing and lovely, **le moulin**, for being as excellent a beta as she is a writer. I could not have done this without her encouragement.

This is the beginning of a multiple one-shot series. Each one will center around a different character. It's going to be done as chronologically as possible just so that it makes more sense. I hope that if you're reading this, you enjoy it. I truly do appreciate anyone who takes the time to read what I write.

* * *

Washington's a lonely place. There's nothing out in the Olympic Peninsula but you, every shade of green imaginable and rain that never stops. Forks and La Push stand as the smallest pinpricks on the map. But they're where the proof lies.

In a 3,000 people sized town and the small Native American reservation neighboring it, the tales are all true. Somewhere, the humble girl awaits at her window for her handsome prince to climb up into her tower and steal kisses in the moonlight. His noble family remains as one in their castle, filled to capacity with loyalty, overlooking the river deep in the heart of the woods. The fierce protector and his band of brothers guard their home, ready to die for the ones they love while they sleep.

And the monsters. The soft rustle of leaves, the shadows in the dark, the last shiver down a spine before everything ends. They reside there, too.

All of them -- every character exists. And this is how they come undone.


	2. I: Carlisle Cullen

**1921**

The burn started slowly.

When the embers of it began to glow, a decade prior, she was just a child and he was in the middle of a difficult day at the hospital he'd chosen. Her leg had snapped cleanly and he knew that the pain must have been intense to her. But she came rolling in on a stretcher, flushed with exhilaration and giggling breathlessly.

_"Oh, oh dear. Leave it to me to hurt myself falling out of that old maple tree."_

Her eyes sparkled back then with innocence and youthful mischief, her caramel tresses stuck to her cheeks and neck in places. He could see her pulse beating against the flyaways that lay on her skin and the involuntary flow of venom watering his mouth gave rise to guilt. It was a guilt that reminded him of why he battled his nature in a brawl of conscience every moment of his existence.

But he still managed to cross her path, even in the outskirts of Wisconsin. She was still watermelon on a midsummer's day, lazy in the sun. He could imagine her with her face upturned to bask in the heat. Beautiful. Sweet. Her heart sounded like the hum of a beehive. Honey blood in every comb --

"Ugh!" he groaned frustratedly in the same anguished way he had the first time he'd been entrusted to care for her. It was the first time he had ever walked out on a patient, a decade before.

Since the day he decided to exist according to his own set of rules, he managed the only way he knew how: by reminding himself that those around him were people. Human beings, just as he once was. Who thought and loved and suffered, just as he still did. If he could only remind himself of the fact that they were not his to condemn, then he could continue on. He was not the one to decide their fate. That ultimate decision was up to the Almighty.

He would've gladly suffered the torture of the damned as penance for all the maddening thoughts he'd had of the dying beauty on his bed.

In ten long years, that homely midwestern girl went from Esme Anne Platt of Columbus, Ohio to Mrs. Charles Evenson. Her cherub cheeks and golden hue were long gone. The faint scars were littered across her legs, her arms, one trailed along her jaw like a caterpillar. It was pale like the rest of her skin in the fragmented moonlight filling the room. She was dying. No medicine could free her from the trauma.

Yet, he brought her home. She was on the verge of getting what she intended on having before she spread her arms and jumped off that cliff.

_"I must admit that I am embarrassed by my carelessness. I've never fallen off my branch! Had I a pair of wings on my back, this would have never happened," she blushed._

_Her father chuckled from the corner where he stood. "But you do, my fallen angel, you do."_

_Bright-eyed and smiling, she looked up. "Do you think I'm a fallen angel, Dr. Cullen?"_

The woman on the bed whispered him out of reverie, unsettled still.

"No, Charles...don't."

In that moment, her fate was decided.

The good doctor -- the healer, the caretaker -- bowed over the remnants of the girl he used to know and pressed his lips to her ear.

"He'll never hurt you again, Esme. I'm giving you your wings now so you can fly...please forgive me."

Her taste was sweet melancholy and the color of amber everywhere. Her sharp gasp rang loudly in his ears. Her racing pulse reverberated throughout him. The overwhelming of his senses became the whole world until he saw the lean figure of his young companion leaning against the frame of the door. Staring into those empty golden eyes, he was positive that his own thoughts were at his mercy.

When the doctor found the strength to wrench himself away, she thrashed about the mattress, contorted by the pain and frenzy. Her soft groans were the only sound left in her body; the only sounds in the room for a fleeting moment.

"All she wanted was her child, Carlisle," the boy said, "and nothing can bring him back. Not even you. You haven't saved her from anything."

He was gone on the tail end of a breeze.

Carlisle was left to face the consequences of what he'd done. And he'd never felt more alone than in knowing Edward thought him a hypocrite and in having failed to save Esme's soul.

God help him.


	3. II: Esme Cullen

For anyone who's missing someone -- this is for you.

Merry Christmas, you're not alone.

* * *

**1931**

35,040 hours. 2,102,400 minutes. 126,144,000 seconds.

She could continue to deconstruct the numbers into oblivion if she wanted to; it still wouldn't matter how small or large they became.

They would always equate to four years.

Granted, four years was merely the blink of an eye to someone in her condition. To someone that wasn't, though...to a human, four years was a very long time and the crux of it all was that a life could change in the blink of an eye or four years. All it took was one moment, a decision, a first step out of a door.

He was quick and light-footed, he always had been. Yet, the sound of him leaving them in the wake of emptiness was more final than that of the front door shutting behind him.

Her husband entered the darkness of her office without so much as a breeze, bringing her out of thought for the second time. She didn't need to look away from where her tawny eyes stared out the window to recognize his presence. He had softly spoken her name from his study upstairs with the knowledge that she would hear him but she'd chosen not to answer. So he appeared at her side like a ghost, sighing as he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind.

All he'd needed to say was breathed in that single deep exhalation he didn't even need to expel.

"You worry too much, Carlisle," she said, touching his forearms affectionately.

"It's one of the few innately human instincts I still have left, thanks to you," he replied.

The corners of her lips turned up faintly. "There's no need to thank me for anything."

They remained quiet for a long while, both of them keeping watch of the path leading up to the house and both of them waiting for something that didn't appear to be coming.

Esme was aware of his tension everywhere, it filled the room and embraced her. She could almost hear the unasked questions and finally, she spoke dazedly.

"I remember the first time I was left alone after the baby died. I sat on the rocking chair in his nursery with his little blue cap in my hands. I cried for hours in a cold room he'd never use or warm, holding onto a hat he'd never wear and all I could think was that there would be nothing that could hurt me more than having never known my child." She paused for only a moment. "This hurts more. Because I know Edward -- I've held him and laughed with him and felt for him as if he was the boy I gave birth to. And I know that he loves us in his own way...I just wish that I could cry for him, too." She sighed, empty. "I can ache for my son yet I can't mourn him being gone. I didn't even tell him that I believe in him just as much as I love him."

Carlisle's fingers lightly brushed her hair back and his caress along her jaw was a small comfort, much needed.

"He knows, darling," he whispered into her temple.

"Then, why hasn't he come back?"

Suddenly, he was just as sad as she was. "Because Edward needs the time alone. He's lost a mother, a father, his chance to be a soldier...a life _he'll_ never know and he has the right to mourn his own losses while he still can. All we can do is be patient. Not seeking him out will say more to him than words possibly could right now. Just have faith, Esme."

She nodded, still refusing to take her eyes away from the window.

Another spacious silence settled over them. Hours passed.

The night was at its darkest when he rubbed her upper arms soothingly and placed a soft kiss to the back of her head. "I'll be in the study if you need me."

Esme squeezed his hand gently before her husband, her strength exited.

The absence shouldn't have hurt so much. After all, there was no physical pain anymore and their hearts had been stone in their chests for quite some time. But the emotions never went away and she herself didn't need a dull pulse echoing throughout her body to feel them.

Esme tried to tell him that so many times but Edward was always so stubborn and headstrong. He was so sure of his own damnation that he refused to see past it, never willing to realize just how wrong he was. If anything, the agony of it was proof of his conscience and one could not bear a conscience without a soul. He didn't need his heart reawakened in order to feel that either. But her beautiful, troubled boy just would not listen.

So, she did the only thing she could do for him now. She waited the way she had every night for the last four of his birthdays, four Christmases and four years he'd missed -- waited by the window, holding on to hope that she was beginning to lose her grip on.

**

An hour later, Edward walked at a human's pace to the front porch where she'd raced to meet him. He was all apologies, "I love you's" and a subtle shimmer in the dawn.

Esme let the hope fall out of her hands and opened her arms, ready to hold on to the one thing she'd never let go of again.


End file.
